This week our SoTD curator is composer David T. Little who will host and curate the opening evening of NYFOS Next 2016 on February 4th. Little’s operas Soldier Songs and Dog Days have received wide critical acclaim, the latter having received performances this season at Fort Worth Opera and Los Angeles Opera and hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “one of the most exciting new operas of recent years.” Little’s “sharp, elegantly bristling” music (New York Magazine) is potent and dramatic, drawing as much upon his experience as a punk/metal drummer as his classical pedigree. Thank you and welcome, David!

Picking five favorite songs is an impossible task. You have no choice but to omit giants, and in this case I’ve had to do just that. Were this a list of 20 or 30 favorite songs, there would be songs by Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Dar Williams, Peter Seeger, Ani DiFranco, The Cure, Willie Nelson, Utah Philips, Nina Simone, Gram Parson, David Bowie, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Paul Simon, Marc Blitzstein, Bessie Smith, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and, and, and…so many others…not to mention, you know, Schubert.  But I’ve only got five slots, so we’ll stick to my absolute favorites, in no particular order, starting with an undisputed masterwork, which I’ll let speak for itself: movement IV from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, “Urlicht”

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) – Urlicht from Symphony No. 2 (1892/1894)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hboIxwiIrnQ

David T. Little will host and curate the opening evening of NYFOS Next 2016 on February 4th.